Mintoff and the university
There seems to be a great deal of confusion among Mintoff fans about what the man actually did for our university (f**k it up, but that’s not what they were told).
Then there are the fence-sitters, who like to think they are being objective by adopting the view that it’s all right if the man you’ve put in charge of your garden sets fire to it and destroys every last tree and shrub, because at least he’s got rid of the weeds at last.
If I say anything about the student-worker scheme they don’t believe me, even though I was right there in the thick of the chaos, having turned 18 in 1982.
And I actually had one man claim in a comment to this blog that university students received a stipend under the Labour government (God bless Mintoff) of the 1980s because he knows for sure that his brother, a medical student, got one.
So I had to explain to him that his brother the medical student didn’t receive a stipend, but a pay cheque from his public sector student-worker ‘job’ – the ones that went to bazuzli tal-gvern. And he never actually had to go in to work so Little Brother never understood that yes, he had a job.
What’s the point of trying to explain things to people who just don’t get the fact that Mintoff destroyed the university and it had to be put together again almost from scratch after 1987?
Let’s resurrect the ghost of Ralf Dahrendorf, who died last year. Perhaps they’ll believe him.
For his pains in trying to save our university from Mintoff’s depredations, the Labour Party dubbed him Public Enemy No. 1 – and then last year paid him grudging tribute – too little, too late.
Dahrendorf was a leading sociologist – leading, that is, in world terms – who Mintoff invited to Malta shortly after he became prime minister, in 1971, to chair the Commission of what was then still the Royal University of Malta.
It ended up in a bloodbath, with Dahrendorf denouncing Mintoff’s educational policies and his “creeping totalitarianism”. He opposed Mintoff’s student-worker scheme most forcefully, saying that it would produce “either unhappy workers or under-qualified students, or both”.
He detailed his damning criticism of the scheme in a prominent article in The Times Educational Supplement (London).
But still Mintoff ignored him.
And the rest is history.
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Mintoff thought he knew better than this man. That tells you everything you need to know about why Mintoff failed as prime minister. Yes, he failed. And that’s how history will remember him – unlike the way history will remember Ralf Dahrendorf.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/lord-dahrendorf-philosopher-and-liberal-politician-who-became-the-first-foreign-director-of-the-lse-1714170.html
And yet there are still several people, some of them too young to have even been born when he was still in power, who worship the ground Mintoff walks on.
There was one other academic who carried on the battle in the 1980s: Prof. Edward Mallia. For this alone, he should have been elevated to Companion of the Order of Merit long ago.
And, yet, I am not aware of him being given any Emeritus Professorship. Please correct me if I am wrong. As an ex-student of his, I am one of those who hold Prof Mallia in very high regard.
It really is a great pity how the University of Malta was pretty much reduced to nothing in the ’80s. Two decades later, and the cracks still show.
As for that pathetic nonagenarian, I have no further comment to make.
Prof. Mallia’s exit from the University of Malta was anything but amicable. He is the most honest and upright human being I have ever known. Perhaps that had something to do with it.
Does anybody remember the day when we students at MCAST (Msida) were told that Mintoff would address us that same evening and explain his education reforms (his, not Dahrendorf’s)?
The meeting lasted until after 10pm and buses were laid on to take us back home. We were not allowed to leave the hall until Mintoff finished speaking. Lorry Sant and his men stood by the doors and made sure of that.
Charles Pule, who was not given the luxury of a microphone, told Mintoff that primary school teachers earned more than MCAST lecturers.
Mintoff tried to incite us against Pule by twisting what he had said.
Some courageous students dared to ask what would happen to students of the future with these reforms. Mintoff’s reply was: “Inthom l-aqwa li mhux se tintlaqtu intom.”
I got home at midnight that day.
We had an allowance, Daphne; it was 50 cents a week, at a time when four bus trips a day – two to get to college and two to get back home, cost 20 cents.
For an impartial account of what Mintoff did for the university, I suggest Oliver Friggieri’s autobiography, pp. 602-604.
Friggieri writes about how the academic staff were summoned one morning to a meeting that same evening at Mintoff’s office. Members of his cabinet were there too.
The university reform was a fait accompli, and included the dismantling of the faculties of theology, philosophy and arts and the introduction of the student-worker scheme.
Lino Briguglio, who was a junior lecturer at the time, tried to ask Mintoff something, but Mintoff interrupted him and shouted “Ma naqblux mieghek ahna! Jekk trid xi haga, iftah partit ghalik.” Briguglio had resigned from the Labour party some days earlier.
After the meeting, Fr Peter Serracino Inglott advised his fellow academics to leave Malta if they wished to pursue an academic career.
So much for Mintoff giving everyone access to education.
Heart-breaking accounts!
The saga of the university in those times is quite complex and to just blame Mintoff gives a very incomplete picture of what actually happened.
It is more a story of envious under qualified teachers at MCAST (Carmel Pule excepted) in their overwhelming majority Nationalist supporters who saw an opportunity to achieve university academic status as well as displace much more highly qualified university staff.
Perhaps Dom Mintoff used them but it is always collaborators seeking self-advancement who are the worst enemies of society and without their egoistic support better counsel would have prevailed as in the Labour Party they were many important figures against the so called reform.
As regards Prof Mallia, an academic of outstanding integrity, it is to his great credit that he declined the rectorship when it was offered to him by Dom.
“Both the Labour Party and the Nationalist Party included Independence in their 1962 electoral programmes. Dom Mintoff and the Labour Party deserve as much credit as George Borg Olivier and the Nationalist Party in succeeding to make Malta Independent. Independence was not the monopoly of any single political party; it was a national achievement.” Desmond Zammit Marmara’ in The Times, today.
Is this the kind of history we are going to get when the PL celebrates its 90 years?
Why not? I’d rather have this than the whole “Freedom Day” charade.
who / whom (?) Mintoff invited
Mintoff was to education what Mussolini was to Italy.
They provided their short-sighted opportunistic “solutions” rather than opportunities.
It is perhaps the right time for both PN and PL to cut out this crap about their own party having ‘won’ independence/freedom.
Reality is that the British successfully resisted such calls for independence as were made by Maltese politicians and, in any case, there was never any clamour on the part of the people for such a step to be taken.
The simple truth is that independence would have been foisted upon Malta at some time during the 1960s whether the Maltese had demanded it or not – this dictated by the then ongoing process of decolonisation, the dismantling of the British Empire.and of changed circumstances on the international front.